Category: Benefits
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Independent Age’s new report, The only way is up, is a really timely and important contribution to the adequacy debate. The report examines how increasing take-up of Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction could affect pensioner poverty and state spending. Here are some key stats: In 2023/24, 62% of people eligible for Pension…
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The first WFFI session
Adequacy, Annuities, Automatic enrolment, Behavioural economics, Benefits, Carers, Consolidation, Contributions, Dashboards, Decumulation, Defined Benefit, Defined Contribution, Disability, Drawdown, Early access, Engagement, Ethnicity, Financial inclusion, Guidance/advice, Housing, Inflation, Investment, Pension freedoms, Pensions gap, Poverty, Retirement, WomenI ran the first Women’s Financial Future Initiative session today, over the lunch hour, with fifteen women at Bravura Solutions. The Initiative exists because the pension system already contains protections for the things that shape a lot of women’s working lives, such as time out for caring, part time hours and relationship change. I don’t…
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The road to Pensions Goth – a Pensions Net-Work after dinner speech
Adequacy, Automatic enrolment, Behavioural economics, Benefits, Carers, Decumulation, Defined Benefit, Defined Contribution, Disability, DWP, Early access, Ethnicity, Financial inclusion, Gender, History, Housing, Income, Inflation, Labour market, Long term care, Mansion House, Pension freedoms, Pensions Commission, Pensions gap, Poverty, Private pensions, Retirement, Self employed, State Pension, State Pension age, Triple lock, WomenI never meant to end up in pensions. In fact, I spent the first 15 years or so of my life dreaming about overthrowing capitalism. My father was a Marxist and fed this passion, telling me I would grow up to be a leader of men, and I actually felt that being a revolutionary wasn’t…
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You don’t have to look far to find accounts from disability benefit claimants who say their evidence has been misunderstood, minimised, or recorded in a way they don’t recognise. The Work and Pensions Committee has raised concerns about PIP assessments and the way contractors and processes can shape outcomes, including claimants’ experiences of reports that…
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There’s a current mismatch between policy, practice and how pension outcomes are determined. New State Pension entitlement is built from individual NI records and, in most cases, people can’t build entitlement from a spouse as under the previous system. Workplace pensions have shifted. In DB, dependent support is often built in, but in DC, outcomes…
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I was speaking at FT Adviser’s Financial Advice Forum event yesterday and I was asked about what the SPa review may yield. It got me thinking about the stagnation in life expectancy increases. In 2020/22 life expectancy projections were around the same level they were at in 2010–2012 for females, and slightly lower for males,…
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In its Pathways to Work report, the Work and Pensions Select Committee raised concerns about the impact of proposed benefit changes on older people: “We put it to the Minister that the changes to PIP eligibility and UC would disproportionately affect older people, despite that group being less amenable to incentives to work. He said…
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When the Government announced it would restrict the Winter Fuel Payment (WFP) to pensioners on Pension Credit in 2024, it did so without any published impact assessment. A benefit that once reached nearly every pensioner, worth up to £300 a year, was removed from around 10 million people on the basis of a targeting principle…
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The state pension underpayment scandal, which has already affected over 130,000 people and could ultimately involve up to 400,000, would not have come to light without the persistence of former Pensions Minister, Sir Steve Webb. His work, supported by campaigners and advisers, has pushed the Government to acknowledge systemic failings and compensate many of those…
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In this week’s Pensions Goth blog I talk about how we can close the pensions gender gap, how tomorrow is the last day to pay to fill in gaps in your National Insurance record missed since 2006, and insights from Morgan Vine at the TUC Pensions Conference on Wednesday 2nd April 2025. Many thanks to…